Zoo

A zoo, short for zoological gardens is a place where animals are kept in captivity. Modern zoos are not only to be for people's entertainment, but for also education, research, and the conservation and protection of different species.

The "Tiergarten Schönbrunn", Vienna, 

HISTORY

Zoos with collections of native or exotic animals date back to ancient times. Private collections of animals and were first recorded in Egypt about 1500 BC, when one zoo, established by Queen Hatshepsut held leopards, monkeys, and a giraffe.

The ancient Chinese also kept animals for display. The earliest records of zoos in China are from the 12th century BC, during the Chou Dynasty. Animals collected from throughout the region were kept near the palace.

When The ancient Greeks imported peafowl from India, so many people came to view them that, for the first time an admission fee to a zoo was charged.

During Ptolemy II's reign in Egypt from 283 to 246 BC, he developed the Alexandria zoo into the greatest collection of animals the world had yet known.

Throughout the Middle Ages, rulers kept zoos or menageries for purposes of education or status, or to satisfy a fascination. Among them was the Caliph of Baghdad in the 8th century AD, Henry I of England in the 12th century, and the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan in the 13th century.

The Tower of London housed England's royal menagerie for several centuries.

Tower of London Picture from the 15th century, British Library

The first public zoo was the Viennese zoo at Schonbrunn. Founded as a royal menagerie in 1752, it opened to the public in 1765 - but only if the visitors were dressed properly.

The Paris Zoo began in 1626 as, the Jardin des Plantes, a physic garden growing medicinal herbs. In 1795, a public zoo inside the Jardin des Plantes was founded by Jacques-Henri Bernardin, with animals from King Louis XIV's menagerie at Versailles. primarily for scientific research and education.

The price of admission for a zoo in 18th century England was a dog or a cat - they were fed to the lions.

The Zoological Society of London was founded in 1826 and opened its gardens - the first to be called a zoo - in 1828. (It wasn't called "The Zoo until the 1920s). Originally intended to be used as a collection for scientific study, it was eventually opened to the public in 1847. Notices on the cages politely requested lady visitors to refrain from poking the beasts through the bars.

London Zoo 1835

In 1853, London Zoo opened the world's first public aquarium, the Aquatic Vivarium,

The oldest North American zoo is in Central Park, New York, City founded in 1865.

In 1859, the Philadelphia Zoological Society had made an effort to establish a zoo, but delayed opening it because of the American Civil War. It eventually opened on July 1, 1874 with 1,000 animals and an admission price of 25 cents.

Dallas Zoo started out with just two deer and two mountain lions. These animals went on display in 1888 at the zoo's original home in City Park.

Carl Hagenbeck, a German animal dealer and zoo owner, developed the moat technique of displaying animals, which greatly improved their conditions. Hagenbeck Zoo, founded in 1907, was the first zoo in the world to house animals in open-air pens.

The world's first open plan zoo, Whipsnade, in Bedfordshire, England, opened to the public in 1927.

The children's section of London Zoo was opened by the American Ambassador Joe Kennedy's young sons, six-year-old Teddy Kennedy and 12-year- old Bobby Kennedy, the younger brothers of future US President John F. Kennedy on June 2, 1938.

ZOO FUN FACTS

Adolf Hitler was the first European leader to ban human zoos, a popular attraction in Europe where exotic peoples were paid to be on exhibit for onlookers, with recreated habitats and shows. Belgium was the last to ban them, in 1958.

Wilhelm II during a visit on 1909 to Hagenbeck Zoo speaking with human exhibitions.

The Skansen Zoo in Stockholm once let a king cobra wander across zoo grounds at night to stop a spate of burglaries—it worked.

When poisonous frogs are fed zoo diets they no longer become poisonous. The wide variety of food in the wild supplies them with the chemicals for making poison.

In the elections for mayor of Rio de Janeiro in 1988 the population was so unhappy with politicians, that a well-known monkey of the local zoo received over 400,000 votes.

The zoo in Tokyo closes for two months of the year so animals can have a holiday from visitors.

The Pyongyang Central Zoo in North Korea is home to a parrot than can squawk "Long live the Great Leader, Comrade Kim Il-sung" in English.

The actress Betty White is a huge animal lover who would have become a zookeeper had she not gone into acting. She rejected a role in As Good As It Gets because of an animal cruelty scene, she visits local zoos when traveling, and she's been a long-term board member and generous donor to the Los Angeles Zoo.

Source Compton's Encyclopedia

Zip

A zip, also known as a zipper or zip fastener is a device for binding the edges of an opening of fabric or other flexible material. It is used mostly to hold clothes together. The zip can also be used for fastening luggage, bags, sporting goods and camping gear (e.g. tents and sleeping bags).

HISTORY

Elias Howe, the inventor of the sewing machine, also received a patent for an "Automatic, Continuous Clothing Closure" on April 29, 1851. This invention was an early version of what we now know as the zipper and was designed to be used as a fastening device on clothing and other textile products. However, despite receiving the patent, Howe never attempted to market his invention and the idea of the zipper was later developed by other inventors.

The zip fastener was invented by a Chicago engineer named Whitcomb L. Judson. He
patented his device on August 29, 1893 and exhibited it at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in his home city. Whitcomb's fastener, which he called a "Clasp Locker or Unlocker for Shoes" was based on a string of hook-and-eye fasteners.

Judson's original 'clasp locker' patent, 1893

The design for the modern zip, the Talon Slide Fastener, was invented in 1913 by Swedish engineer Gideon Sundback, who was living in Meadville, Pennsylvania, Sundback substituted two parallel strings of metal teeth in place of Judson's hooks and eyes and called it the Hookless #2. Sundback received a patent for his zip, which he called a "Separable fastener" on March 20, 1917.

Sundback's invention was assured success when the US Navy bought 10,000 zips for use on new flying suits in World War I.

Sandback's 1917 patent

In the late 1920s and early 1930s slide fasteners started appearing on clothing for both men and women. The first dresses incorporating the zipper appeared in the 1930s.

ETYMOLOGY

The word zip originally referred to the sharp sound of a fast-moving object such as a mosquito (first recorded in 1875) or a bullet (1885).

The word 'zipper' was introduced by Goodrich's 1925 rubber galoshes called "Zipper Boots". The abbreviation zip was also first recorded in 1925.

The term zip-fastener was first seen in 1927 in the Daily Express.

The first use of the verb 'to zip' in the sense of doing up a zip, was in Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel Brave New World .

Zipper slider brings together the two sides By DemonDeLuxe (Dominique Toussaint) 

FUN ZIP FACTS 

Worldwide, the zip industry is estimated to be worth almost £10 billion a year

Although the zipper market in the 1960s was dominated by Optilon (Germany) and Talon Zipper (USA) and, Japanese manufacturer YKK grew to become the industry giant by the 1980s. By then, YKK was holding 45 percent of world market share, followed by Optilon (8 percent) and Talon Zipper (7 percent).

The "YKK" on your zippers stands for "Yoshida Kōgyō Kabushiki Kaisha," which is Japanese for "Yoshida Manufacturing Shareholding Company."

YKK, makes everything they use in their production processes, in-house. From the machines they use to make their zippers, to smelting their own brass - they even make the boxes they ship their zippers in.

Today, the chances are, the zip that keeps your valuables in place started life in a factory in Qiaotou, a dusty town in Zhejiang Province, China. According to a report in The Guardian in 2005, Qiaotou's zip plants manufacture 80 per cent of the world's zips, churning out 124,000 miles of zip each year (enough to stretch five times round the globe or halfway to the moon).

A Q-Tip dipped in shampoo and rubbed into the area where a zipper is caught on a jacket can get it unstuck.

Sources The Independent, Daily Express

Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe is a landlocked plateau country in the southern part of the continent of Africa. It has a land area three times the size of England.

HISTORY

Zimbabwe is thought to be the location of Ophir, the Biblical land from which King Solomon got  gold, ivory, peacocks and other precious items.

The first people in Zimbabwe were the Bantu-speaking Iron Age farmers that settled before 380 AD.

The name of Zimbabwe comes from the ancient ruined city of Great Zimbabwe in the south-eastern hills of Zimbabwe near Lake Mutirikwi. It means “great house of stones” in the local Chishona language.

Great Zimbabwe is thought to have been the capital of a great kingdom, although which kingdom is not certain, during the country's Late Iron Age. Construction on the city began in the 9th century and continued until it was abandoned in the 15th century.

The ruins of Great Zimbabwe were constructed with geometric precision instead of mortar and had religious sculptures matching the sophistication of other medieval civilizations. Chinese and Persian artifacts found at the site also prove they had far-reaching trade networks.

By 1200 Mashonaland, now East Zimbabwe, was an important settlement of the Shona people, who had moved from the North and erected stone buildings.

In the 15th century the Shona empire, under Mutota, expanded across Zimbabwe before it fell to the Rozwi, who ruled until the 19th century.

In 1837 the Matabele, a Bantu people, in retreat after unsuccessful battles with the Boersi, settled in Western Zimbabwe.

A Matabele livestock enclosure, as depicted by William Cornwallis Harris, 1836

Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, was founded on September 12, 1890 by the Pioneer Column, a small military force of the British South Africa Company. It was originally named Fort Salisbury after the British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury. The city was renamed Harare in 1982, after the Shona chief Neharawa.

Mashonaland and Matabeleland, together with what is now Zambia, were granted to the British South Africa company in 1889, and the whole was named Rhodesia in 1895, in honor of Cecil Rhodes.

King Lobengula of Matabeleland accepted British protection in 1888 but rebelled in 1893; he was defeated, but in 1896 after the Jameson Raid the Matabele once more unsuccessfully tried to regain their independence.

Their portion of the area south of the Zambezi river, then known as Southern Rhodesia, became self-governing in 1923 and a member of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in 1953.

African nationalists were campaigning for democracy and the African National Congress (ANC), which had been present since 1934, was reconvened in 1957 under the leadership of Joshua Nkomo. It was banned in 1959 and in 1961 Nkomo created the Zimbabwe African people's Union (ZAPU). In 1963 a splinter group developed from ZAPU, the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) with Robert Mugabe as its secretary-general.

After the dissolution of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in 1963 the leader of the Rhodesian Front party (RF) Winston Field, became the first prime minister of Rhodesia. The RF was a grouping of white politicians committed to maintaining racial segregation.

In April 1964 Field resigned and was replaced by Ian Smith. Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence was adopted by the mostly white minority government of Prime Minister Ian Smith on November 11, 1965. It announced that the British colony of Rhodesia, self-governed since 1923, regarded itself as a sovereign state. The culmination of a protracted dispute between the British and Rhodesian governments, it was the first unilateral breakaway by a British colony since the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776.

Ian Smith signing the Unilateral Declaration of Independence on 11 November 1965

Britain broke off diplomatic and trading links with Rhodesia and the United Nations initiated economic sanctions, but these were bypassed by many multinational companies.

In 1969 Rhodesia declared itself a republic breaking its last links with the British crown. It adopted a new constitution, with white majority representation in a chamber legislature. Rhodesia continued as an unrecognised state for the next decade.

At the beginning of 1979 Smith produced a new majority rule constitution, which contained an inbuilt protection for a white minority but which he had managed to get Bishop Muzorewa to accept. In June 1979 Bishop Muzorewa was pronounced prime minister of what was to be called Zimbabwe Rhodesia. The new constitution was denounced by Mugabe and Nkomo. By now, they were leading the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army from bases in neighbouring Mozambique.

In September 1979 the Lancaster House agreement paved the way for full independence. A new constitution was adopted and elections were held under independency profession in February 1980. They resulted in a decisive win for Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front party.

Bishop Abel Muzorewa signs the Lancaster House Agreement

The new state of Zimbabwe became fully independent on April 18, 1980, with the Rev Canaan Banana as the country's first President and Robert Mugabe as Prime Minister. The Zimbabwe Dollar replaced the Rhodesian Dollar as the official currency.

The national flag of Zimbabwe consists of seven even horizontal stripes of green, gold, red and black with a white triangle containing a red 5-pointed star with a Zimbabwe Bird. The present design was adopted on April 18, 1980. It is based on the flag of Zimbabwe's ruling party, the Zanu-PF.

Robert Mugabe was the President of Zimbabwe from 1987 until his resignation in 2017.

Zimbabwe's commercial farming sector was traditionally a source of exports and foreign exchange, and provided 400,000 jobs. However, the government's land reform program badly damaged the sector. Coffee production, once a prized export commodity came to a virtual halt after seizure or expropriation of white-owned coffee farms in 2000, and has never recovered.

The Zimbabwe dollar was abandoned as its national currency on April 12, 2009 after hyperinflation had led to an inflation rate of 79.6 billion per cent. The country has since been using the U.S. Dollar, the South African Rand, and the Botswana Pula.

In 2013, the finance minister of Zimbabwe announced that after paying its civil servants that month, the country would have just £138 ($217) in its state bank account.

When Shimon Peres stepped down as Israel’s president in July 2014, President Robert Mugabe (born February 21, 1924) assumed the mantle of the world’s oldest head of state.

On November 15, 2017, President Robert Mugabe was placed under house arrest as Zimbabwe's military took control in a coup.  He resigned the Presidency a week later.

Robert Mugabe in 2011

Having served as the leader of Zimbabwe for 36 years Robert Mugabe was one of the oldest and longest serving leaders of a non-royal country, in the world.

FUN ZIMBABWE FACTS 

Alphabetically speaking, Zimbabwe comes last in the list of UN member countries.

Zimbabwe's estimated population in 2016 was 16,150,362. More than half the people in Zimbabwe are below the age of 21.

Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, is a large and bustling city with a population of over 2 million people. It is the economic and cultural center of Zimbabwe, and is home to many government offices, businesses, and universities. home to over 1.6 million people. It was known as Fort Salisbury from its foundation until April 18, 1982.

Harare, Zimbabwe from the Kopje. By Andrew Balet 

Victoria Falls is on the Zimbabwe-Zambia border. The local name for the waterfall in Zimbabwe is “Mosi-oa-Tunya” (the smoke that thunders).

Zimbabwe has 16 official languages including English and Zimbabwean sign language. The other 14 are: Chewa, Chibarwe, Kalanga, “Koisan” (presumably Tsoa), Nambya, Ndau, IsiNdebele, Shangani, Shona, SeSotho, Tonga, Tswana, TshiVenda, and IsiXhosa.

The coat of arms of Zimbabwe features a shield held by two zebras symbolising racial equality.

Parents in Zimbabwe who cannot afford school fees can offer livestock such as goats or sheep as payment for tuition fees.

In 2015, Zimbabwe was expelled from the preliminary competition for the 2018 Football World Cup for non-payment of a debt to FIFA.

Zimbabwe has entered every Summer Olympics since 1980 and won eight medals in total. Seven of those medals were won by swimmer Kirsty Coventry. The other one was gold for the women's hockey team in 1980.

In Zimbabwe, there is widespread belief in mermaids which are often blamed for work delays.

Sources Daily Expres, Thefactfile.org

Zero

Zero is the point when reckoning begins. In mathematics it is a number meaning nothing.

Records show that the ancient Greeks seemed unsure about the status of zero as a number. They asked themselves, "If you don't have anything, why do you need a number?", leading to philosophical  arguments about the nature and existence of zero.

The Mayan civilisation constructed quite early a very sophisticated number system, possibly more advanced than any other in the world at the time. It included one of the earliest instances of the explicit zero in the world, which they represented as a shell shape.

The concept of zero as a digit in the decimal place value notation was developed in India, The earliest text to use a decimal place-value system, including a zero, was the Lokavibhāga, a Jain text from the mid fifth century.

The number 605 in Khmer numerals, from a 683 AD inscription. Early use of zero as a decimal figure

In the Medieval period there were religious arguments about the nature and existence of zero. Zero and negative numbers were banned in Florence in the 13th century because they were considered a thing of the devil.

Although mathematicians have used zero since at least the 8th century, the word 'zero' was first recorded in English only in 1604.

When he published his equations of general relativity Albert Einstein failed to notice that his theory predicted an expanding universe. Alexander Friedmann, a Russian mathematician, found to his amazement Einstein had made an elementary algebraic error that caused him to overlook a solution to his own equations. Einstein had divided by zero at one point in his calculations, a mathematical impossibility.

Humans are unable to burp in zero gravity environments.

Honeybees, despite having the brain size of a sesame seed, can understand the concept of zero.

In English, zero quantities are plural by default. Therefore you shall write "0 results found", "I have found no results".

Originally written for Songfacts

Zeppelin

A Zeppelin is a type of rigid airship, which was named after the German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin (July 8, 1838 – March 8, 1917).

Pixiebay

On retiring from the army in 1891, von Zeppelin devoted himself to the study of aeronautics, and his first airship was built and tested in 1900.

Von Zeppelin’s first rigid airship, the LZ-1, made its maiden flight over Lake Constance near Friedrichshafen, Germany on July 2, 1900. The Zeppelin airship had an engine and a propeller which meant the aircraft could be directed.

The first flight of LZ 1 over Lake Constance (the Bodensee) in 1900

Zeppelins were originally used for public transport. They were first flown commercially in 1910 by Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-AG (DELAG), the world's first airline in revenue service. By mid-1914, DELAG had carried over 10,000 fare-paying passengers on over 1,500 flights.

During World War I, a number of Zeppelin airships were employed in bombing England. Great Yarmouth was the first British town to be bombed by a Zeppelin, on January 19, 1915. London suffered its first raid on May 31 of that year.

The most intense of all the Zeppelin attacks during World War I was on September 2, 1916, when fourteen Zeppelins dropped 35,000 lb. of bombs on London and elsewhere.

Cow intestines used for sausage skins were so vital in making gas bags for German Zeppelins that during World War 1 the Kaiser banned Germans from eating sausages.

A Zeppelin flying over SMS Seydlitz

The German LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin became the first commercial passenger transatlantic flight service in 1928. The hydrogen-filled airship was named after Ferdinand von Zeppelin.

The  Hindenburg and Graf Zeppelin II airships were the largest aircraft (in terms of length and volume) to take to the skies. Built in Germany between 1932 and 1938, each was 245m (803ft) long.

The Hindenburg airship caught fire and was destroyed while trying to land at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey, killing over 30 people on board.

The Hindenburg Zeppelin, named after the late German president Paul von Hindenburg, was almost named Hitler but was refused by Adolf due to his dislike of large aircrafts. He later said he was glad the aircraft didn't share his name after the famous Hindenburg Disaster of 1937.

The Hindenburg disaster in 1937, along with political and economic issues, hastened the demise of Zeppelins. Sometimes, they are still used as tourist attractions, or for advertising.

Pixiebay

The rock band Led Zeppelin got their name from a fellow musician, who predicted the group would go down like a "lead balloon."

When Led Zeppelin played together for the first time in front of a live audience in Gladsaxe, Denmark, in 1968, they used the name 'The Nobs'. This was because Eva von Zeppelin, granddaughter of the inventor of Zeppelin airships, threatened to sue them for tarnishing the family name.

Source History